F*ck me, it's June already. Summer back in the sunny South-East, but winter here in Oz. Its nowhere near as cold as Irish winters, but it aint no beach party here either. Ah, well, cant have it every way, I guess.

 

We went up to the Rialto tower last weekend. Its known as "The Observation Tower" here in Melbourne. Its the tallest office building in the world, and believe me, it's quite tall. You get the ear-popping thing in the superfast elevator. This was pretty cool, and even better, the top of the building is lit up blue at night. There's even a cafe on the top floor. We went up just after dark, so we saw the whole city glowing. I was quite surprised at how far Melbourne stretched out. Chicago didnt seem as big from the Sears tower, and that had 8 million people compared to Melbournes 3.5 million. Just shows how much more compact Chicago was than here, I guess.

 

We also went out to a place called Chadstone, in the suburbs about 45 minutes from downtown. Imagine the biggest shopping mall in Ireland, then double it... that was Chadstone. It has every brand name in clothes you ever heard of. It's quite an appealling place to rich people / girls / rich girls.

 

Also took some pictures out the window of where I work. We're up on the 13th floor, so you get a decent view. There's a little table beside the window, to sit & eat lunch if ya want (shown below), you can watch the ant-like people run around below while you eat / drink coffee. Its quite soothing. My desk is 12 feet from the window, so I can just turn around, stare out & daydream whenever. Not that I would, I'm always working hard. 

 

28 June 2004

 

A few weeks ago, a gang of us from the hostel went to the Australia Vs Scotland rugby game. Given the the number of Scots in our group (5) compared to the number of Aussies (1), we all figured we'd paint our faces with the Scottish colours. This seemed like a good idea till the Scots got beaten miserably (35 - 15 I think). Still though, it was a good laugh. It was in the Telstra Dome, which is pretty famous in this part of the world. Dunno how the Scots were supposed to stand a chance, cos the Aussie guys were only double the size of them.

So, that night, a good crowd of us from the hostel went on the beer. To an Irish bar, of course. There were Irish, Scots, English, Kiwis, Chinese, and Canadians in the group (probably a few more I've forgotten about too). This was coincidentally the day after me & Emmet moved out of the hostel, so I'm not sure which they were celebrating.

 

I met up with a Waterford man a couple of weeks back for a pint (no, not Emmet). It was a good friend of my family, Pat (or Uncle Pat as I keep calling him by mistake). He was here for a month doing volunteer work for a charity called Children First Foundation, run by Moira Kelly. It's well-known here in Oz, check out http://www.childrenfirstfoundation.com/ if you get the chance.

Anyways, the charity raises money for kids from Albania, Iran, Iraq, Uganda, Somalia etc to come over to Oz and get operations they desperately need. There are landmine victims, deformities due to nuclear fall-out, etc. There's a house/farm just outside Melbourne where the kids await/recuperate from their operations.

So the work that Pat was doing basically involves looking after the kids there, bringing them to hospital, bringing some of them to school, staying over in the hospitals with them and so on. He's done this quite a few times over the last couple of years, and is returning again later in the year.
So after meeting up with Pat, he invited me out there for the weekend to see if I'd like to do it during the year. I gotta say, this was an eye-opener of a weekend. I really enjoyed it & couldnt believe the spirit in these kids, despite what obstacles they have in life. You can see how happy they are as a result of what the charity has done for them. I'm hoping to spend a bit of time out there later in the year. 

 

So, the Scottish girls have left Melbourne :-( They got their bus to Adelaide on Saturday. I was expecting the clouds to fill over and burst open, accompanied by thunder & lightning as their bus pulled away, but surprisingly it didnt.

They've all finished up their jobs here in Melbourne, and after 5 months here, have gone to do most of their travelling, as their visas expire in October.

They're going camping in Ayers Rock for a few days after Adelaide, flying to Sydney, then bussing up the Easy coast to Queensland. Where it's still 30 degrees, might I add, full of beaches and sunshine.

T'is a shame they're not here anymore, as Me & Emmet have known them as long as we've been in Melbourne. They made the sensible choice though. If I had saved up enough to not have to work for a few months, I'd be heading up North-East too, where they dont know the meaning of Winter.

Hopefully we'll all get to meet up before they go home. There'll be some visits to home territory after all the travelling, too. They've promised to show us around Edinburgh (they live about 45 mins from there), which I've never been to yet. I'm not sure how Waterford will cope with these lasses at all ;-)